Glass is desirable for numerous properties and applications, including optical clarity and overall visual appearance. For some example applications, certain optical properties (e.g., light transmission, reflection and/or absorption) are desired to be optimized. For example, in certain example instances, reduction of light reflection from the surface of a glass substrate may be desirable for storefront windows, display cases, photovoltaic devices such as solar cells, picture frames, other types of windows, and so forth.
Photovoltaic devices such as solar cells (and modules therefor) are known in the art. Glass is an integral part of most common commercial photovoltaic modules, including both crystalline and thin film types. A solar cell/module may include, for example, a photoelectric transfer film made up of one or more layers located between a pair of substrates. One or more of the substrates may be of glass, and the photoelectric transfer film (typically semiconductor) is for converting solar energy to electricity. Example solar cells are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,510,344, 4,806,436, 6,506,622, 5,977,477, and JP 07-122764, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference.
Substrate(s) in a solar cell/module are sometimes made of glass. Incoming radiation passes through the incident glass substrate of the solar cell before reaching the active layer(s) (e.g., photoelectric transfer film such as a semiconductor) of the solar cell. Radiation that is reflected by the incident glass substrate does not make its way into the active layer(s) of the solar cell, thereby resulting in a less efficient solar cell. In other words, it would be desirable to decrease the amount of radiation that is reflected by the incident substrate, thereby increasing the amount of radiation that makes its way to the active layer(s) of the solar cell. In particular, the power output of a solar cell or photovoltaic (PV) module may be dependant upon the amount of light, or number of photons, within a specific range of the solar spectrum that pass through the incident glass substrate and reach the photovoltaic semiconductor.
Because the power output of the module may depend upon the amount of light within the solar spectrum that passes through the glass and reaches the PV semiconductor, certain attempts have been made in an attempt to boost overall solar transmission through glass used in PV modules. One attempt is the use of iron-free or “clear” glass, which may increase the amount of solar light transmission when compared to regular float glass, through absorption minimization.
In certain example embodiments of this invention, an attempt to address the aforesaid problem(s) is made using an antireflective (AR) coating on a glass substrate (the AR coating may be provided on either side of the glass substrate in different embodiments of this invention). An AR coating may increase transmission of light through the substrate so that additional light reaches the semiconductor absorber film of the PV device. Thus, the power of a PV module can be improved in certain example embodiments of this invention.
It is known to use porous silica as AR coating on a glass substrate. But an AR coatings made solely from porous silica may be ineffective with respect to scratch resistance in certain instances. Such a low scratch resistance may be caused by the presence of pores, especially a large number of pores, in the AR coating. There may be a need to increase the scratch resistant property of AR coatings at any given transmission for high performance AR coatings that can be used as a PV superstrate.
Thus, it will be appreciated that there may exist a need for an improved AR coating, for solar cells or other applications, to reduce reflection off glass and other substrates.